


Nothings Changed At All

by Ghostly_Laughter



Series: Left to My Own Devices [2]
Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Heavy Angst, M/M, Planeswalking, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 10:05:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19248991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostly_Laughter/pseuds/Ghostly_Laughter
Summary: Jace tries to run away from dealing with things. Again.Words turn to violence.Ral Zarek is broken.





	Nothings Changed At All

In a fit of utter panic, Ral Zarek had inadvertently planeswalked out of his apartment, and out of Tomik Vrona at the height of his climax.

_Krokt, what in the multiverse have I done!?_ Ral screamed internally at himself, in complete disbelief at what had just happened. 

He quickly took stock of his surroundings, furtively glancing this way and that in the hazy fog of what seemed to be the twilight hours of another plane. Luckily, he hadn’t planeswalked into a major thoroughfare of Kaladesh or Theros. His instincts seemed to have brought him to an unknowable location - he wasn’t familiar with this environment at all. Attempting to center himself and take control of the situation, he breathed deeply and felt a name enter his mind- 

_**Vryn** _

-The word echoed through his mind, somehow taking shape and form. Hadn’t he heard that somewhere before?

He stood up, straightening his back, and immediately realized he was completely naked. Of course, moments earlier he had been with Jace. Tomik. 

“DAMMIT!”, he roared out loud, producing a geiser of sparks from his hands as he shook them in frustration. “Get OUT of my head!”

His shouts echoed through the empty landscape. He was without his gauntlet, without his accumulator, and incredibly stressed out by the circumstance at hand. There he stood, naked upon an unfamiliar plane, in a seemingly endless field of barren rock and sand. On the horizon, massive ring-shaped structures loomed thousands of feet in the air, taller than mountains. An unnerving mechanical keening echoed in the distance. Glowing blue orbs of light danced lazily about his head, and he swiped at one irritatedly. 

Knowing full well that Tomik would be worried sick about him, he prepared to leave for home, drawing in his power. But, something stopped him. This desolate alien plane, devoid of life or movement in the early dawn offered a kind of respite, even if the wind was grazing his bare ass, and something could materialize and try to kill him at any moment. Tomik was probably confused and alarmed by Ral’s sudden and painful disappearance from behind him. Ral was known to lose control from time to time, especially without his gauntlet. They had just reached a place where he could leave off his gauntlet while they were intimate with one another, and it had taken trust and mutual understanding to get there. This would undo everything they had worked towards… Not to mention the fact that it wasn’t Tomik who had overloaded his circuitry. 

Since Jace had returned to Ravnica to fight in the War, responding to the interplanar beacon like a moth to a flame, Ral was paralyzed with conflicting emotions. For the last three months, he had operated under the notion that Beleren had left him, possibly for good. He wasn’t sure if Beleren was alive or dead, and had spent those months reconciling and planning for both realities; one in which Jace had died on another plane, or the alternative, that he had unceremoniously left him without an afterthought. During their last conversation, Ral had attempted to warn him about the Golgari assassin Vraska, who had threatened him in the past, only to have Jace planeswalk away with his ex-girlfriend, Liliana. Before Jace had returned, the very gorgon who had almost killed him had betrayed Ral and his compatriots, and nearly sabotaged Ravnica from being saved. Now this creature was Jace’s… girlfriend!? Gorgonfriend?

He had tried to kill Vraska before she had planeswalked away from him like a coward. He still wanted to kill her. He had watched Jace kiss her. He wanted to scream from the nonsense of it all. Nothing about Jace’s actions made sense to Ral, but then again, Ral was with Tomik now.

Somewhere between hating Jace and loving him, he had ended up meeting Tomik, who had helped him bide the time. More than that, even. He had become someone that Ral could depend on… Confide in. He had stumbled into a relationship with Tomik while he was vulnerable, and he cursed himself for that now. He should have been more careful. 

“Jace only wants to be with people - or creatures, who try to kill him,” he rumbled darkly to himself, as morning dawned on this foreign plane. “Maybe I should try to kill him.”

He held his face in his hands.

~

A bolt of lightning struck the place beside Tomik and Ral’s bed, and suddenly Ral was home, again, rid of the mysterious plane and it’s crumbling rings. But, it didn’t feel like home for some reason. The sun had risen on Ravnica, but the light playing across their bed revealed an empty spot where Tomik had once lain. The sheets had been thrown off and streaks of scorch marks made a spiky pattern across the mattress.  
“Tomik?” Ral called out tentatively, beginning to curse himself once more.

Just then, there was a short, hesitant knock on the door. 

Ral gathered up his clothes from the previous day and hastily dressed himself, acutely aware of how naked he still was. Pulling the shirt down across his muscled, tattooed torso, he stumbled to the door and peeked out the viewport. 

No one.

He recognized that no-one anywhere, and for the fiftieth time that morning, cursed under his breath. After arguing with himself about whether he should open the door or not for half a second, he threw it open brazenly and turned his back on the entryway, allowing the shadow into the apartment. The door creaked closed on it’s own and the lock clicked shut.

~

Jace dropped the invisibility spell and materialized before Zarek, his signature blue cloak replaced with a rather sleek black one, his sharp blue eyes shimmering brilliantly in contrast to the deep shade. He sucked in his breath and avoided eye contact with the storm mage. Already he could see the waves of electrostatic charge coating the man’s body like a second skin. He looked infuriated. Jace admitted to himself that he was a little frightened, but he had expected this. He didn’t want this to turn into a physical conflict, although it really seemed like Ral Zarek wanted to fry him to a crisp. He figured he should say something. Anything. He opened his mouth to speak but promptly closed it. He had gone over this in his mind thousands of times since his arrival back on Ravnica, but now that the storm mage stood bristling before him, he had no words. 

“H-hi, Ral, “Jace hazarded stupidly. “I.. how are you?”

Ral Zarek let out a bark of a laugh that turned into a snarl. His eyes sparked and his fingers were connected to the floor by long strings of electric charge like glittering spiderwebs, arcing and snapping dangerously. Jace’s mouth formed a delicate ‘O’ shape as he realized that Ral’s gauntlet and accumulator were nowhere near by.

“You think you can just walk back into my life like I’m another plane for you to save or abandon at will,” he growled, his hackles raised. 

Jace took one last pained moment to look at this beautiful, terrifying man before he instinctually began to cloak his body in an illusory spell of invisibility once more-

“NO!” Ral shouted, thunder rumbling in the distance. 

Quick as lightning, he shot forward at Jace and pinned him to the wall with his body, breaking the illusion in a flash of cyan light. Jace’s face contorted with fear and pain as he slammed against the wall of the apartment, Ral’s chest pressed hard against his. Zarek breathed heavily, his eyes flitting rapidly across Jace’s features, only inches away. As soon as he had pinned him he had released his hold, backing away, unsure of what he would do next. Jace grew still as his eyes lit up with a white glow. His body began to dematerialize as the Blind Eternities opened for him. 

Ral Zarek drew on every power imaginable in his body. Harnessing the raw energy of Ravnica’s weather, and the storm churning inside him, his body became a perfect conduit, glowing so bright Jace stumbled back against the wall once more, averting his gaze. Then, with a flourish of the storm mage’s hands, bringing his palms smashing together with such force the apartment’s windows shattered, Jace’s link to the multiverse was broken, sending him skidding across the floor, his cloak tangling behind him. 

“You can’t just RUN AWAY EVERY TIME!” the Izzet Guild Master roared, his hair standing on end. Suddenly he fell to the ground, his powers dispersing rapidly. The storm leaked from his eyes as he buried his face in his hands. 

~

Jace lay crumpled against the far wall like a discarded paper ball. It was difficult to bring himself to look at the man he had once spent hours confiding his hopes and dreams in. It wasn’t his fault entirely… He tried to convince himself that the lost time, the thing with Vraska… they were inevitable actions resulting from the mind-death he had experienced on Amonkhet. But, how could he explain anything before that? He had been avoiding Ral, delaying the inevitable. Jace knew he wasn’t fit to love. He felt things - and he erased them. He experienced things - and he rewrote those memories within his mind. Huge swaths of time in Jace’s mind had become gray, murky water; barren swamps of memories he didn’t dare dredge up from the deep recesses they had fallen into. Layers of trauma and hurt that, instead of processing like a normal human being, he merely blinked out of existence. The memories were gone, but the behaviors remained, and thus he could never move forward, caught in a perpetual self he no longer recognized. 

From across the room, Ral’s head snapped upward to face the door, the familiar thud of Tomik’s footsteps approaching. As the doorknob turned, Jace disappeared with a sound like waves receding. A rough sob caught in Ral’s throat as his partner appeared in the doorway, looking frantic and then frightened as his eyes flitted from broken windows to the shattered glass upon the floor. 

“What in the name of the Paruns is going on here!?” he barely suppressed a shout, his voice quavering as his eyes met Ral’s, a well of emotion threatening to overflow. 

“Are you hurt?” He moved towards Ral, then stopped midway, a flash of distrust crossing his face like a shadow. 

Tomik’s voice was quiet and low when he spoke again, his eyes downcast.  
“What happened last night?” 

The Storm Mage got to his feet and lifted his head to level with Tomik.

“I’m so sorry-” he started, unsure where to begin. “I… haven’t been honest with you.”

Tomik assumed a calm and professional tone, as if he were arbiting a financial dispute among the Orzohv bankers, “Are you sleeping with Jace Beleren?”

“Krokt! No!” Ral boomed, his face reddening, and his knuckles clenching involuntarily.

“Are you thinking about it?” Tomik asked, barely more than a whisper.

Their eyes met and a truth hung between them, transparent and tangible.

A faint scraping sound made them both jump as Ral whipped his gaze towards the noise and lifted his hand, sending a precise bolt of electricity towards it. The needle of electricity pierced Jace’s invisibility illusion like a stone falling into a clear lake. It had taken all of the illusionist’s powers to keep himself from losing control. He merely stopped, his face draining of color. Tomik looked confusedly from Jace to Ral in disbelief, taking in the sight of the two men, the shards of glass, the motes of electricity floating through the air. Then with a sweep of his capelet, he strode out the front door without so much as a word, the door shutting behind him with a click. 


End file.
